100% Genuine Faux-Riginal - 1966 Dodge Monaco 500

1966 Dodge Monaco 500

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

Generally, when you're building a custom car, the rules go out the window. Drop the suspension, fatten the tires, smooth the firewall, chop the top--anything goes. A builder puts his signature touch on the vehicle, yet runs the risk of spoiling what made the car special in the first place--which is why classic-car enthusiasts tend to scoff at those who would remake what was a perfectly good car to begin with.
Still, in the ever-versatile world of car building, there was once a way to split the difference between factory-stock and full-on custom: The ''phantom rod'' movement has come and gone (with twin-cab Model A pickups, early 1960s El Caminos, that sort of thing), and doesn't show its face much anymore.
Or maybe it does, and we just don't realize it--because the efforts are so cleverly and smoothly executed that they don't draw attention to themselves. More and more hobbyists are building cars that the factory didn't, filled with factory options, painted the most brazen factory colors, and built for the singular pleasure of their owners--yet they voluntarily stay within the realm of what the factory might (should?) have done.
These cars look right, but they're made up of pieces from something else. We examined one of these in HCC #52 (January 2009)--a 1969 Olds Delta 88 convertible rebuilt with Royale pieces. Here's another car that history says never happened. Call it a faux-riginal.
Clearly, the car exists--we're looking at it. But it wasn't born this way. When assessing the dueling lines of 1966 Dodge C-bodies, the lower-line Polara/500 and the higher-end Monaco/500, with their shared sheetmetal, drivelines and expansive 121-inch wheelbase, somehow Dodge decided that the Polara line here in the States couldn't live without a convertible variant, while the Monaco could manage just fine without letting the sun shine in.
The rationale here is lost to time and, looking back some four and a half decades on, it only raises questions. In cost and purpose, would a Monaco convertible prove too close to a comparable Chrysler (the '66 300 was already a skosh cheaper than the Monaco 500)? Was Highland Park afraid that the wicker interior trimmings might get wet and shrivel up where they were attached? Or were convertibles just too carefree to cozy up to the high-end image that Dodge was cultivating for its Monaco? And why did Canada get a Monaco 500 convertible, when the U.S. didn't?
At some point, the questions without solid answers get to be too much. When Morgan Von Rueden reached that point, when his frustration with what the factory chose not to do became too great to bear any longer, he just built his own.
Morgan is a Mopar C-body enthusiast. He's got at least half a dozen other vintage Dodges in his garages, including a '66 Monaco 500 coupe, a '66 Monaco wagon, a '67 Monaco four-door hardtop packing 440 power, a '68 Polara 500 convertible (another 440 car) and a '68 Monaco wagon.
''I grew up with this era of Dodge, and always liked the styling on the 1966 models the best,'' he says, pointing out subtle design cues, like how the grille and taillamps echo each other by tapering toward the center. Additionally, he knows what made a Polara a Polara and what made a Monaco a Monaco, and in 1987, he set about making his dream Monaco convertible.
Morgan's first task: locating a decent Polara convertible as a donor. ''I found one in Granada Hills,'' about 400 miles from his San Francisco home, he said. ''It had been sitting for 10 years, but it was very original and started right up.''
As for the creation of his faux-riginal dream car, ''I started with a Monaco 500 trunklid, for that gorgeous tail panel, and a pair of Monaco 500 front fenders--one NOS, and one I bought used somewhere.'' And the fenders were crucial: The shape was the same, but the Monaco's fenders did away with the Polara's upper-body molding and added elongated faux louvers behind the front wheel, as well as a ''500'' medallion on either side, ahead of the front wheel near the headlamps. (The medallions on these particular fenders were NOS.) Swapping fenders meant fewer holes to punch and fill, you see.
Other trim differences on the Monaco and Monaco 500 included a stand-up fratzog hood ornament and chrome windsplit, model-name callouts and the trunklid, which eliminated the brightwork between the taillamps and accommodated the (working) lamps in the trunklid. (As it turned out, Morgan also scored a set of NOS lamps for the trunk section.) It was easier to find an entire trunklid than it would be to find the parts and convert them.
And then there was the paint color. Dodge offered 22 colors in 1966, covering virtually every hue of the rainbow, including Morgan's choice--Mauve Poly. This is just one more distinctive touch that sets Morgan's convertible apart--Mauve was only an option in the Dodge palette for 1966 and '67. Eddie Meek at Eddie's Auto Painting in Santa Ana, California, blocked, primed and painted the Polaraco's massive flanks and made it look like new. No, he did better than that--he made it look factory-built.
Although Morgan was going the faux-riginal route with his convertible, and was therefore open to all the changes from factory he deemed necessary to produce his dream car, the donor Polara afforded him one optional nicety he was able to carry on to the finished product: the original 325-horsepower 440-cu.in. V-8 powertrain. Such was the attention to factory-like detail that it still blows out a single exhaust. All of the original fittings and finishes went on to make it period-picture-perfect. Similarly, the 727 TorqueFlite automatic was simply refreshed, rather than rebuilt, at Burbank Transmission back in 1990.
With the powerplant done, attention turned to the interior. As this machine would now be a Monaco 500, it received bucket seats (in lieu of the Polara's bench), a console with floor shifter, padded armrest and tach (converting the column-shift to a floor shifter was one of the toughest aspects of the whole production, Morgan tells us), and because it was a Monaco, it would receive that model's wicker interior trim: mid-door, just above the armrest, and on the backs of the bucket seats. The interior, redone with an SMS kit, was converted to white pearl seating areas and door panels (with matching floor mats), with a black dash and carpets, giving the seats a "floating" feel as you look inside. Six-way power seating and a tilt-and-telescope steering wheel were added to the high-option mix. Thornton Upholstery of Santa Ana, California, took care of the conversion.
There are a few technological updates here, but they're limited to things like gas shocks and radial tires--the sort of mild modifications that would make you want to get in and drive it anywhere at a moment's notice, and not the sort of extensive changes that are generally frowned upon in the old-car community. The result that you see here has been completed since 1999, although in person, it looks factory--or restoration--fresh, more than a decade on, and has been driven a couple of thousand miles per year since then.
''It drives as good as it looks, and I'm just as thrilled with it 10 years after the rebuild was completed as I was when it was freshly done," Morgan tells us. "I'm very lucky to have been able to get exactly what I wanted to achieve with this car.''

This article originally appeared in the May, 2010 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.